The Constitutional Convention

The Constitutional Convention

On May twenty-fifth, sev-
enteen eighty-seven,the
fifty-five delegates from
each state met at Philad-
elphia’s Independence
Hall. It took them a very
long time to get there;
many of them had to travel
extremely long distances
to reach their destination.
It was extremely hot and
rainy as the delegates arr-
ived. This meeting was
called in order to edit and
fix the flaws in the Arti-
cles of Confederation. The
delegates agreed on a few
important things today,
at the very beginning of
the meeting. Firstly, they
agreed that each state
would have only one vote
to influence the decisions
of the overall group. Also,
only a majority vote of
seven is needed to decide
any topic of debate. The
delegates also decided to
keep everything that hap-
pens in the meeting absol-
utely secret as well, but I
have plenty of ways of
finding out. The windows
have been shut, but that
hasn’t kept me from giving youall the inside information.
After a while, delegates
realized that revising the
articles would not get rid
of the problems we
have been facing; they
decided that they should
destroy the Articles and
create a completely new
constitution. They were
now (secretly) calling it
the Constitutional Conv-
ention. They all became
very determined to form a
government that everyone
could live with- George
Madison of Virginia said,
“[I] would bury [my]
bones in the city rather
than [leave] … the Conv-
ention without anything
being done.” On May 29,
1787, the Virginia deleg-
ates offered up the Vir-
ginia Plan. It included a
chief executive called a
president, federal courts,
and a two-housed chamber
of Congress. But, the
representation in Cong-
ress would have been
based on the population
of each state. The larger
states obviously loved this
plan, but the smaller states
weren’t as happy. Six
weeks later, the next bril-
liant idea was proposed.
A group with Roger Sher-
man leading them intro-
duced the New Jersey...

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